Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Bordertown would be quite good, because we could service some of my neighbouring constituencies across the border—and I am sure they would take that up. Along with the committee, I believe that the government should give urgent consideration to establishing agricultural courses at Australian technical colleges with close links to rural areas and consider expanding campuses to such regions as the Barker electorate, which covers the Barossa, Murraylands and Riverlands in the south-east, all of which are important areas requiring skills in agriculture and forestry.

Another way we can continue to enrich the skills of our rural regions is through the FarmBis program, which is a jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the states on a matching basis. FarmBis aims to foster a culture of continuous learning amongst primary producers and encourages them to plan for their future training needs as a part of their overall business planning. The educational and training activities funded by FarmBis are directed at farm management related activities and include general business management, including strategic planning; financial management; marketing; human resource management, including leadership; natural resource management; and production management. FarmBis is a very useful and highly successful program and it is extremely important that the Australian government makes a long-term commitment to the program to give certainty to the industry. It is pretty important that people know where they are going.

Unfortunately, each state has different criteria, and the level of funding for training is proving difficult to manage across borders and national initiatives. There is a further difficulty when one state decides to withdraw from the FarmBis program—and I see that because I have towns in my electorate that are very close to the Victorian border, and in fact to the New South Wales border as well. They come to me and say: ‘Why are we treated differently from our cousins across the border? Isn’t it the same FarmBis program?’ So we really should get some consistency across the whole system. What this clearly does is indicate to a state that it will be disadvantaged while its neighbours move forward and make their businesses bigger. What we need to do is create a nationally consistent approach for FarmBis funding administered directly by the Commonwealth—one management area for all. We have heard very similar thoughts when it comes to managing the Murray-Darling Basin. We clearly need to keep this program and continue to provide it past its current expiry date of 2008.

I agree with the committee’s recommendation that the Australian government develop a national strategy for facilitating industry initiatives in rural skills training, including a coordinating body and funding mechanism for industry initiatives. Currently, a number of industry and producer groups have taken the initiative to develop and package courses directly relevant to their needs—and I welcome that. Who knows the skill shortages better than those who are actually involved in that industry? We have the benefit of those industries identifying needs at a local level—another way of thinking globally but acting locally. The government can use this information and play a coordinating role to prevent different industry groups from reinventing the wheel through lack of communication and coordination.

We need to get our rural areas skilled up to ensure the future of our agriculture, fishing and forestry industries and to keep this nation’s rural areas going. In my own electorate we have a large forestry industry. I went to great pains to, first of all, get a university operating in the region and, secondly, to get Southern Cross University to offer a forestry course. That has been very useful. The more skills people have, the better our future looks. That is a positive for this country and particularly for my electorate of Barker.

I want to see the people of my electorate receiving a higher education in these areas through increased access to scholarships and higher standards of training through the various programs this country offers to our rural people. They will go on to work and manage these industries with the best skills possible because we will have developed our rural or urban skills as a nation. In this particular case, we found there were some distinct differences and failures in the system in rural areas. I think part of that is to do with the distance we have to travel, which anyone who represents a rural electorate would understand. I thank all of those involved in the inquiry. It has been a great pleasure and an honour to be part of this committee and this inquiry.

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